Effort under way to preserve machine-gun nest, labor legacy near Telluride

At the top of Imogene Pass, between Telluride and Ouray, a machine-gun emplacement and a small wooden fort survive as silent testimony to workers’ struggles and as a legacy to labor.

A century ago, millions of dollars were made in the San Juan Mountains in gold and silver mines, but not by miners. The early days of pick-and-pan prospecting had given way to deep-shaft industrial mining, and miners traded their lungs and brawn for a few dollars a day to work under increasingly dangerous conditions. As more miners and mill workers died from cave-ins, explosions from dangerous gases and silicosis in their lungs, they demanded better working conditions and something we take for granted — the eight-hour work day.

Fierce competition between mine owners and immigrant mine workers resulted in increasing tension and calls for unionization. In Telluride in 1903, the mine workers went on strike and Gov. James Peabody, in collusion with the wealthy mine owners, called out the Colorado National Guard.

Montrose resident MaryJoy Martin has chronicled the rise of the Western Federation of Miners and its hero, Vincent St. John, in her book, “The Corpse on Boomerang Road,” which may become a motion picture.

She writes vividly of Bulkeley Wells, a captain in the Colorado National Guard who took command of Troop A, First Squadron Cavalry. The unit was comprised of cowboys, Wells’ employees at the Smuggler-Union Mining Co., and a few union-hating locals. Last year, I hiked with Martin to the top of Imogene Pass to see physical proof of labor strife from more than a century ago.

Martial law was declared in Telluride, with “mass deportations on special trains, false criminal charges, beatings, threats and arrests without due process,” according to Martin’s book. “No one could leave the county without official permission.”

As illegally deported miners trickled back into Telluride over Imogene Pass, National Guardsmen under Wells’ command built a wooden sentry post, complete with small stove, a flagpole and a stone sniper or machine-gun nest that housed a Colt rapid-fire machine gun. Wells named it Fort Peabody, after the governor. It’s still there.

The wood has weathered considerably in the high altitude winds and shifting stone walls have shrunk the sentry post, but probably 60 percent of the original historic material exists. When Martin and I climbed into the tiny sleeping quarters, we could see remnants of the metal heating stove and names of National Guard troopers carved, with 1904 dates, on the back wall.

Martin wrote the nomination to have Fort Peabody listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Approved by the National Park Service, the site represents labor history in the West. Next summer the U.S. Forest Service and San Miguel and Ouray Counties will cooperate on stabilizing Fort Peabody and interpreting its vivid history.

Started in November 1903, workers completed the post in the freezing weather of February 1904. Historical archaeologist Jon Horn explains, “Even after the Telluride strike was finished in 1904, Wells continued to station his own men at the post as late as 1908 to deter the flow of union sympathizers into the region. Fort Peabody has been ravaged by the elements for over 100 years, but remains as the only post in Colorado built specifically to control union activists.”

Linda Luther-Broderick, open space and recreation coordinator for San Miguel County, said the repair of the fort will use as much existing material as possible.

I’ve stood in the sentry post and looked out across the San Juan Mountains. I’ve thought about the National Guardsmen and the long, star-filled nights at 13,365 feet. In the cold wind, I added a cap and gloves and walked down to the machine-gun nest, which is just a hole really, surrounded by stacked stones carved out of a north-facing loose scree slope. The sentry post commands a 180-degree view of Imogene Pass and the dirt road going east to Ouray or west to Telluride. As I stood in the hole, Jeeps full of tourists traveled both ways below me, providing a perfect angle of fire for an automatic weapon.

Mary Joy Martin said, “Labor history has been totally ignored in the United States and it’s a dramatic history in Colorado. People should know that a governor had the gall to permit a border patrol station to prevent workers from entering a Colorado county.”

I agree. It’s time to stabilize the site and install interpretive signd so that future visitors may know what sacrifices workers endured a century ago. Next summer I want to help. I want to carry some of the framing lumber and pound a nail or two.

Perhaps signs will explain that bully Bulkeley Wells committed suicide during the Great Depression. As for union organizer Vincent St. John, who dedicated his life to better working conditions for the laboring man, he went to federal prison under false charges.